英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

brand [brand 词源字典]

brand: [OE] A brand was originally a ‘piece of burning wood’; the word comes from West and North Germanic *brandaz, a derivative of the same base (*bran-, *bren-) as produced burn, brandy, and perhaps broil. In the 16th century it came to be applied to an ‘(identifying) mark made with a hot iron’, which provided the basis for the modern sense ‘particular make of goods’, a 19th-century development.

A specialized (now archaic) sense of the word in English and other Germanic languages was ‘sword’ (perhaps from the flashing sword blade’s resemblance to a burning stick). This was borrowed into Vulgar Latin as *brando, and its derived verb *brandīre came into English via Old French as brandish [14]. Brand-new [16] may be from the notion of emerging pristine from the furnace.
=> brandish, brandy, broil, burn[brand etymology, brand origin, 英语词源]

campaign

campaign: [17] Ultimately, campaign and champagne are the same word. Both go back to late Latin campānia, a derivative of Latin campus ‘open field’ (source of English camp). This passed into Old French as champagne and into Italian as campagna ‘open country’, and both words have subsequently come to be used as the designation of regions in France and Italy (whence English champagne [17], wine made in the Champagne area of eastern France).

The French word was also borrowed into English much earlier, as the now archaic champaign ‘open country’ [14]. Meanwhile, in Italian a particular military application of campagna had arisen: armies disliked fighting in winter because of the bad weather, so they stayed in camp, not emerging to do battle in the open countryside (the campagna) until summer. Hence campagna came to mean ‘military operations’; it was borrowed in to French as campagne, and thence into English.
=> camp, champagne

cushion

cushion: [14] Ultimately, cushion and quilt are the same word. Both come from Latin culcita ‘mattress, cushion’, which is related to Sanskrit kūrcás ‘bundle’, and both reached English via rather circuitous routes. In Gallo-Roman (the descendant of Latin spoken in France from the 5th to the 9th centuries) culcita underwent a transformation which produced Old French coissin and cussin, which Middle English borrowed as quisshon and cushin.

The complexity of forms spawned by these was quite staggering – the OED records nearly seventy spellings of the word – but by the 17th century things had settled down, with cushion emerging the winner. Cushy [20], incidentally, is quite unrelated, being a borrowing from Hindi khūsh ‘pleasant’.
=> quilt

monster

monster: [13] Monster originated as a word for a ‘divine omen or warning’. It goes back via Old French monstre to Latin mōnstrum, a derivative of the verb monēre ‘warn’. From its original sense ‘warning of misfortune, evil omen’, mōnstrum was transferred to the sort of thing that could function as such an omen – a ‘prodigy’, or a ‘misshapen or horrifying creature’ – whence the meaning of English monster.

The word’s connotations of ‘largeness’ seem to be rather more recent, first emerging in English in the 16th century. Other English derivatives of mōnstrum, some of them reflecting a later sense of monēre, ‘show, inform’, rather than the original ‘warn’, include demonstrate [16], monstrance [16], muster [13] (which originally meant ‘display’), and remonstrate [16].

And from monēre itself come admonish, monitor [16], monument [13], premonition [16], and summon [13].
=> admonish, demonstrate, monitor, monument, muster, premonition, remonstrate, summon

bad (adj.)

c. 1200, "inferior in quality;" early 13c., "wicked, evil, vicious," a mystery word with no apparent relatives in other languages.* Possibly from Old English derogatory term bæddel and its diminutive bædling "effeminate man, hermaphrodite, pederast," probably related to bædan "to defile." A rare word before 1400, and evil was more common in this sense until c. 1700. Meaning "uncomfortable, sorry" is 1839, American English colloquial.

Comparable words in the other Indo-European languages tend to have grown from descriptions of specific qualities, such as "ugly," "defective," "weak," "faithless," "impudent," "crooked," "filthy" (such as Greek kakos, probably from the word for "excrement;" Russian plochoj, related to Old Church Slavonic plachu "wavering, timid;" Persian gast, Old Persian gasta-, related to gand "stench;" German schlecht, originally "level, straight, smooth," whence "simple, ordinary," then "bad").

Comparative and superlative forms badder, baddest were common 14c.-18c. and used as recently as Defoe (but not by Shakespeare), but yielded to comparative worse and superlative worst (which had belonged to evil and ill).

As a noun, late 14c., "evil, wickedness." In U.S. place names, sometimes translating native terms meaning "supernaturally dangerous." Ironic use as a word of approval is said to be at least since 1890s orally, originally in Black English, emerging in print 1928 in a jazz context. It might have emerged from the ambivalence of expressions like bad nigger, used as a term of reproach by whites, but among blacks sometimes representing one who stood up to injustice, but in the U.S. West bad man also had a certain ambivalence:

These are the men who do most of the killing in frontier communities, yet it is a noteworthy fact that the men who are killed generally deserve their fate. [Farmer & Henley]

*Farsi has bad in more or less the same sense as the English word, but this is regarded by linguists as a coincidence. The forms of the words diverge as they are traced back in time (Farsi bad comes from Middle Persian vat), and such accidental convergences exist across many languages, given the vast number of words in each and the limited range of sounds humans can make to signify them. Among other coincidental matches with English are Korean mani "many," Chinese pei "pay," Nahuatl (Aztecan) huel "well," Maya hol "hole."

Capri pants

1956 (said to have been designed c. 1948), from Capri, Italian island; so called perhaps because they were first popular in Capri, which was emerging as a European holiday destination about this time (compare Bermuda shorts).

emerge (v.)

1560s, from Middle French émerger and directly from Latin emergere "bring forth, bring to light," intransitively "arise out or up, come forth, come up, come out, rise," from assimilated form of ex- "out" (see ex-) + mergere "to dip, sink" (see merge). The notion is of rising from a liquid by virtue of buoyancy. Related: Emerged; emerging.

emergence (n.)

1640s, "unforeseen occurrence," from French émergence, from emerger, from Latin emergere "rise up" (see emerge). Meaning "an emerging, process of coming forth" is from 1704.

emersion (n.)

"reappearance, act of emerging," 1630s, noun of action from past participle stem of Latin emergere "to rise out or up" (see emerge). Originally of eclipses and occultations.

migration (n.)

1610s, of persons, 1640s of animals, from Latin migrationem (nominative migratio) "a removal, change of abode, migration," noun of action from past participle stem of migrare "to move from one place to another," probably originally *migwros, from PIE *meigw- (source of Greek ameibein "to change"), from root *mei- (1) "to change, go, move" (see mutable). Related: Migrational.

That European birds migrate across the seas or to Asia was understood in the Middle Ages, but subsequently forgotten. Dr. Johnson held that swallows slept all winter in the beds of rivers, while the naturalist Morton (1703) stated that they migrated to the moon. As late as 1837 the "Kendal Mercury" "detailed the circumstance of a person having observed several Swallows emerging from Grasmere Lake, in the spring of that year, in the form of 'bell-shaped bubbles,' from each of which a Swallow burst forth ...."

price (n.)

c. 1200, pris "value, worth; praise," later "cost, recompense, prize" (mid-13c.), from Old French pris "price, value, wages, reward," also "honor, fame, praise, prize" (Modern French prix), from Late Latin precium, from Latin pretium "reward, prize, value, worth," from PIE *pret-yo-, from root *per- (5) "to traffic in, to sell" (cognates: Sanskrit aprata "without recompense, gratuitously;" Greek porne "prostitute," originally "bought, purchased," pernanai "to sell;" Lithuanian perku "I buy").

Praise, price, and prize began to diverge in Old French, with praise emerging in Middle English by early 14c. and prize being evident by late 1500s with the rise of the -z- spelling. Having shed the extra Old French and Middle English senses, the word now again has the base sense of the Latin original. To set (or put) a price on someone, "offer a reward for capture" is from 1766.

sad (adj.)

Old English sæd "sated, full, having had one's fill (of food, drink, fighting, etc.), weary of," from Proto-Germanic *sathaz (cognates: Old Norse saðr, Middle Dutch sat, Dutch zad, Old High German sat, German satt, Gothic saþs "satiated, sated, full"), from PIE *seto- (cognates: Latin satis "enough, sufficient," Greek hadros "thick, bulky," Old Church Slavonic sytu, Lithuanian sotus "satiated," Old Irish saith "satiety," sathach "sated"), from root *sa- "to satisfy" (cognates: Sanskrit a-sinvan "insatiable").

Sense development passed through the meaning "heavy, ponderous" (i.e. "full" mentally or physically), and "weary, tired of" before emerging c. 1300 as "unhappy." An alternative course would be through the common Middle English sense of "steadfast, firmly established, fixed" (as in sad-ware "tough pewter vessels") and "serious" to "grave." In the main modern sense, it replaced Old English unrot, negative of rot "cheerful, glad."

Meaning "very bad" is from 1690s. Slang sense of "inferior, pathetic" is from 1899; sad sack is 1920s, popularized by World War II armed forces (specifically by cartoon character invented by Sgt. George Baker, 1942, and published in U.S. Armed Forces magazine "Yank"), probably a euphemistic shortening of common military slang phrase sad sack of shit.

this (pron.)

Old English þis, neuter demonstrative pronoun and adjective (masc. þes, fem. þeos), probably from a North Sea Germanic pronoun *tha-si-, formed by combining the base *þa- (see that) with -s, which is probably identical with Old English se "the" (representing here "a specific thing"), or with Old English seo, imperative of see (v.) "to behold." Compare Old Saxon these, Old Frisian this, Old Norse þessi, Middle Dutch dese, Dutch deze, Old High German deser, German dieser.

Once fully inflected, with 10 distinct forms (see table below); the oblique cases and other genders gradually fell away by 15c. The Old English plural was þæs (nominative and accusative), which in Northern Middle English became thas, and in Midlands and Southern England became thos. The Southern form began to be used late 13c. as the plural of that (replacing Middle English tho, from Old English þa) and acquired an -e (apparently from the influence of Middle English adjective plurals in -e; compare alle from all, summe from sum "some"), emerging early 14c. as modern those.

About 1175 thes (probably a variant of Old English þæs) began to be used as the plural of this, and by 1200 it had taken the form these, the final -e acquired via the same mechanism that gave one to those.

	Masc.	Fem.	Neut.	Plural
Nom.	þes	þeos	þis	þas
Acc.	þisne	þas	þis	þas
Gen.	þisses	þisse	þisses	þissa
Dat.	þissum	þisse	þissum	þissum
Inst.	þys	þisse	þys	þissum